


Being a Weasley

by notquitepunkrock



Series: post-war potter [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ? - Freeform, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, No Dialogue, Poetry, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, angsty teenagers angsting basically, gen - Freeform, idk man I might add more tags when it's not late at night, maybe? - Freeform, what is this style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:02:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9783743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: sometimes, Weasley is a hard name to live up to





	

**Author's Note:**

> because there's not enough Weasley angst

_I don’t deserve the Weasley name_ , Victoire thinks as she walks shuffles awkwardly to the Ravenclaw table, the entire Great Hall silent because that’s not where Weasleys belong. She mumbles it when she sees Skeeter’s headlines the next morning, announcing shock and outrage at her house, that the Wizarding World is aghast that not _only_  is she blonde and pale and dainty, but she’s also in the wrong house. She thinks it for the next four months as she secures her tie snugly around her neck, blue and bronze instead of the expected red and gold. She thinks it when she’s sitting beside Teddy on the way home, unable to stop squirming because she expects to be greeted with disappointment at the eagle on her chest. Her father’s smile and her mother’s pride break through the fog of guilt, the feeling of failure, and soon she’s laughing with Dom and Louis on the way back home, all thoughts of her inadequacies forgotten.

* * *

  _It’s hard to be a Weasley_ , Dominique decides, yanking stupid baubles out of her strawberry-blonde waves and sticking her tongue out at cameras. She thinks it when she’s told to sit up straight, to smile for the cameras, to put her best foot forward. She thinks it when she’s reminded how _ridiculous_  it is that her name causes a fuss when her parents weren’t near as important as some of her aunts and uncles. She shouts it in her father’s face one night, gripping at her _not quite red_  hair and screwing up her blue eyes and pointing at her freckled nose because he doesn’t understand. She hisses it to her cousins as she slides aside her shirt and exposes a tattoo marking her smooth skin, one that she got illegally, and announces that she just wanted to not have to be perfect for once. Years later, when she’s pushed and shoved her way into the muggle world, a place where her name comes without any connotations, and yet still comes home to the love and warmth of the Burrow, she thinks that maybe being a Weasley isn’t so bad after all.

* * *

 

 _Being a Weasley sucks_ , Louis informs Hugo in their first class together, First Year. He thinks it because, despite being not the first, nor even the second, of their family to be in the Slytherin house, there was a hush over the room until Dom led them all in cheering. He thinks it because of the way his father’s smile never quite reaches his eyes the way it does when he talks about Dom or Vic’s houses. He mumbles it when no one can see him past his thick red locks and dark blue eyes and endless freckles marring his otherwise Veela-perfect face. He growls it into Dino Zabini’s neck two days after awkwardly bringing him to meet the family, when he suddenly understands how Albus felt the first time Scorpius came for Christmas dinner. He mumbles it when he has to push past reporters upon leaving his cousins’ houses, when even the most private of family dinners isn’t truly private. He rescinds that statement when he’s twenty-three, watching his family talk and laugh and dance at his wedding, while Dino’s family sits primly to the side, because being a Weasley is about love and fun and forgiveness and that’s something that he would never wish away.

* * *

 

 _Weasley is too much to live up to,_  Molly thinks, eyes falling closed for the third time as she bends over her OWLs study guides, a yawn spilling from her lips. She thinks it as she walks into her first exam, hands shaking from too little sleep and too much caffeine as she sits down. She whispers it on a breath of relief as she reads her results, tears gathering in her eyes at the sight of two As alongside a string of Os. She hisses it into the flames in the Gryffindor common room the day she fights with her sister, glaring at a picture of them as it goes up in flames, because Weasleys are about _family_  and she’s never been good at getting along with Lucy. She screams it into her pillow as she’s reminded of her father’s endless perfect scores, of her uncles’ and aunt’s successes, of her own relative failure because she’ll never be _enough_.  She hates it when her family mutters that she’s _just like her father,_ and they don’t mean it in a good way. She disregards it when she’s the first Weasley to be a Healer, determination forcing her to be the best mediwitch she can be. She forgets it the minute she’s called down to the emergency room and her own face is staring back at her, except this one is too pale, too covered in blood and bruises, and her father is looking at her like she’s the only hope. She’s fully lived up to it, she decides wrapping her arms around her sister as she heals, thanking every god that exists that she didn’t lose her twin before they ever made up, that she was able to save her; as she feels, for the first time, that she belongs in a family of heroes.

* * *

 

 _Weasleys aren’t as good as everyone thinks,_  Lucy decides, tugging on the green tie that threatens to choke her because Molly tied it for her with more force than necessary. She spits it as she drags her little cousins out of situations they shouldn’t be in so young, as she wrestles firewhiskeys and muggle beers from their hands, and turns to down them in the same instant. She grumbles it when she’s ignored by everyone but her mother and the other Slytherin cousins at family gatherings, as everyone fawns over and flocks to her sister but no one thinks to congratulate her for her triumphs. She yells it as she kicks a wall, tears streaming down her face before she can stop them, whirling towards Louis with years of being berated and yelled at and ignored written across her tan face. She screams it when her cousins’ have to restrain her as she bangs herself bloody and bruised, when they have to hold her down and sit on her and no one wants to leave her alone for more than a few seconds and she hates it, feels suppressed and suffocated and burdensome. She wraps herself in it on the pitch, channeling it into her beating, and swears it when they try to take that away from her for her “protection.” She takes it back the minute her sister is crying over her after an easy mistake, apologizing for _screwing up_  - as if Molly Audrey Weasley has ever screwed up in her life - and begging her to let her help. Maybe Weasleys are really as good as they say. Maybe Lucy just couldn’t see it.

* * *

 

 _Being a Weasley means not knowing yourself,_  Fred determines, steeling his nerves before he takes to the sky, even though he doesn’t like quidditch. He is adamant about it when he watches cousin after cousin lash out at the press, at each other, at themselves because they can’t live up to the people they were meant to be, when _he_  can’t live up to his long-dead uncle. He informs James of it when they’re in detention for another stupid prank, when the only time he gets a look of pride from his father is when he’s losing points for Gryffindor like the man who shares his name - he doesn’t even want to prank people, doesn’t like the anger that comes with it. He thinks it each time a teacher falters over his name, every time someone reminds him _well it’s not like you look like him_ , because of his dark skin and dark hair, when even his own father can’t always look him in the eye. He grumbles it when he gets his first detention for fighting and his mother is _pissed_ , right up until she hears that he was protecting his sister, and then she dissolves into tears because that’s just like Fred, and he is reminded that nothing he does is done for himself. He proves it wrong when he quits quidditch and runs away from the joke shop and becomes a professor, something Fred the First never would have done, and he’s good at it, the best after Uncle Harry and Neville, and he shines brighter than he ever did as a teenager.

* * *

 

 _I don’t look like a Weasley,_ Roxanne realizes at too young an age, when Skeeter articles confuse her parentage and she realizes she sticks out in a sea of pale skin and bright hair, despite her own freckles and curly red locks. She grumbles it to Freddie when she’s sorted into Hufflepuff, as she watches her cousins disperse to the tower and trudges to the cellar with only Teddy for company. She bristles when she hears it from other people, from the girl who’s lips are pressed against hers and who’s hands are roaming over her skin, when she asks what that’s supposed to mean and pushes the girl away like she’s been burned. She thinks it in every family picture, every time she’s asked to be black or white but not both, every time her hair isn’t _right_ , her skin is too dark, her eyes too close to black. She mumbles it when she’s reminded that she’s made of soft curves, short and chubby like her grandmother instead of tall and thin like seemingly everyone else in her family. She ignores it when she’s older, when she’s the one on the cover of magazines with the Weasley name plastered over her face, a leading businesswitch who revolutionized her father’s company, because there’s more to life than looking the part.

* * *

 

 _Being born a Weasley is like being branded at birth,_  Rose informs Teddy when she’s a first year, looking like a petulant child but for the sincerity in her eyes. She stands by it when she watches every breakdown in her family, when she has to rip her brother away from staring eyes and fight for her cousins’ privacy. She spits and kicks and snaps it when Skeeter publishes gossipy trash about her family that she knows only her grandparent’s generation would ever care to read, but it’s lorded over them like some sick joke by her classmates. She grumbles it to Al and Scorpius who nod wisely, because they know better than anyone, practically, what it feels like to be defined by a name, an appearance, a brand. She thinks it as she hacks off her curly copper hair, bleaching it half to death and dying it silver and rose gold and every color but the ones that half her family has, as she buries her nose in a book and doesn’t come back up for weeks, months even, as she flirts with boys and girls and everyone in between. She thinks it with pursed lips when it doesn’t take much maneuvering to get a job in the Auror department with her name and her looks, and her _connections_  that she never even asked for, and the glares and rolled eyes that greet her every time she and Albus walk out of the department to meet Scorp, because they _cheated the system_. She shrugs and accepts it when she is engulfed in the love and light and joy of her family. There’s something about being a Weasley that sets you apart from everyone else in the best way, so Rose accepts it and grows with it and lets it be a part of her. (She keeps dying her hair, though.)

* * *

 

 _I’ll never be good enough to be a Weasley,_  Hugo thinks, locking himself away with nothing but a mountain of books and a blasting radio for company. He swears it when he finds himself surrounded by yellow and black, when he’s dismissed Rose’s younger, meeker brother, when his plans and his name could never compare to those of his family. He feels the words scar into his skin every time he’s weird and different and _less_  than the rest of them, every time he could have been better or done better. He the bite of them in his back everywhere he goes, where everyone knows what family he belongs to, what they did and what he is supposed to prove he can do too. It’s in his eyes whenever he does something wrong, whenever he is scolded or told to improve. It’s on his face whenever his mother informs him that he’s acting like a child (he got that from his father), or when his father frowns and says he has to grow a thicker skin eventually, or when Rose sends him pitying glances and tells him to try harder _for mum’s sake._ He shoves it to the side with a scream and throws himself into healing, glaring at anyone who says someone like him can’t be a Healer, fighting his way into the position like he fights to keep his head above water. He _is_  strong, and he _is_  brave, and maybe they aren’t his main traits, maybe he’s not built to be a fighter but that’s fine with him.

* * *

 

 _You can’t do anything original in the Weasley family_ , James decided early on with a frown on his small face. He is reminded of it every time he picks up a hobby and suddenly he’s playing quidditch _just like_ his parents and his uncles and his grandfather, when he plays a prank and it’s _just like_ his uncles Fred and George, when he is sorted into Gryffindor _just like_ every other godforsaken member of his family. Its seared into his brain when his grades are almost identical to his cousins’ (so so many cousins), and when every thought in his head seems to have belonged to someone else first. He curses the concept when he goes into career counselling with no idea what he wants to do, because everyone else has done it first and better than he could. He bristles when he’s reminded by his Uncle Ron that Scorpius greeted him with the words, _red hair, freckles, and a hand-me-down robe...you must be a Weasley_ , and he hates it because that’s all he is too, all any of them are, save maybe for Vic and Al and Hu, who don’t even have a hint of red in their hair. When he falls into art, he forgets it, covering canvases and pages and walls with scenes only he comes up with, things that are unique and special to _him_ , to Jem Potter, not just a Weasley or another James or Sirius. Someone of his own.

* * *

_I’m not a hero like the rest of the Weasleys,_  Albus mumbles, tears filling his eyes in the dark, his first night as a Slytherin. He feels it in his bones when Jame stops talking to him until break, when his friendship with Scorpius is something that makes his family push him away. It reverberates through him like an ache when someone accidentally makes a _comment,_  and pretty soon his hands hurt from punching the stone walls in the dungeon, and he collapses against Scorpius because no one understands what it feels like to not live up to expectations like Scorp does. It feels real and raw and painful every single day when he’d rather be sitting with his cousins shrouded in red, and instead he’s got Louis and Lucy and Scorp at the table draped with green, when the snake on his chest seems to hiss and scare everyone away just as much as the lion on his siblings’ chests seem to promise protection. He lets it leave his mind as he patches up Rose and Scorp after training, as he uses hands gentler than anything to claw his way to the Head Boy spot, then to carefully right all the wrongs in Wizarding Child Services and to house students with no home over the holidays. He _is_  a hero, to hundreds of kids whom he protects and rescues and loves, to his cousin and to Scorpius, and to his father most of all.

* * *

 

 _The Weasley family is suffocating,_  Lily huffs to Hugo, ignoring the confusion his face as she says it. It is cemented further every time her mother absently plucks a hair brush from her hands to finish the job, or Gran fills her plate for her, or Jem and Al and Rose and Fred and Louis scare off the boys (and girls) who even think about sending her a second glance. She is reminded of it with every babying stare and carefully watchful look, with every kiss on the forehead and hair she receives from cousins not much older than herself. She hates it with every fiber of her being from her red red red hair to her brightly painted toes, because she’s the last to be allowed to fly (even though her mother _played quidditch for a living_ ) and the last to be allowed to leave the kid’s table (when only her cousin Allie and Frankie Longbottom are left there, and as far as she’s concerned, they’re _babies_ ), and the last to get to watch PG-13 movies with the others (because for some reason, she has to wait until she’s actually thirteen, even though both her brothers got to watch them at ten.) She mumbles it through gritted teeth when her family is ever watchful, ever mindful, and she has to force herself away to allow herself to mess up because god _damn_ it she just wants the permission to mess up sometimes. She admits she’s wrong when she moves out and she messes up _bad_  and she needs someone, and her brothers and Hugo and Rose all come running at the sound, because sometimes she needs to be looked out for. Sometimes she needs to be babied for, and that’s okay.


End file.
